Key points:
- About 60 church leaders, members and friends attended the Greater New Jersey Conference’s “Prayerful Witness” outside Delaney Hall immigration detention center.
- The conference’s Board of Church and Society sponsored the four-hour gathering, which featured outreach expressing themes of Christian love, concern and solidarity.
- Volunteers offered food, resources and other support to families.
United Methodists in New Jersey gathered outside a large federal immigration detention center in Newark to pray, preach, peacefully protest and provide support to detainees’ families.
About 60 church leaders, members and friends attended the Greater New Jersey Conference’s “Prayerful Witness” outside the barbed-wire gates of the controversial Delaney Hall immigration detention center on Aug. 15.
The GEO Group, a private firm, reopened the facility in a heavily industrial area near Newark Airport in early 2025 amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, with a $1 billion contract to manage it for 15 years.
Delaney Hall is one of more than 200 immigration detention centers across the U.S. and the largest on the East Coast. As of July, the U.S. had more than 65,000 people in immigration detention nationwide. More than 70% are not convicted of any crimes.
Delaney Hall’s fluctuating population of detainees awaiting deportation or immigration proceedings is near its 1,100-bed capacity.
“Christian love, my friends, is not passive,” said the Rev. Eunice Vega Perez, in the first of three speeches by Greater New Jersey district superintendents. They preached amid frequent interruptions from noisy passing trucks and airplanes flying overhead.
“If our faith is anything, it must move us beyond sympathy into solidarity, beyond prayer into presence, beyond presence into action and beyond action into the long, beautiful work of seeking justice,” Perez said.
The center has been plagued by reports of overcrowding, spoiled food, lack of medical services, inhumane conditions and abuse. Over 200 detainees staged a month-long hunger and labor strike in May. And three detainees have died in the past eight months, prompting questions and complaints about poor medical care and calls for greater accountability from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Offering radical hospitality
The conference’s Board of Church and Society sponsored the four-hour rally on a sunny Saturday morning, where speeches and signs expressed themes of Christian love, concern and solidarity. Speakers prayed for families of the three men from Haiti, Guatemala and El Salvador who died, as well as others being detained.
They also called for the facility’s closure and for the release of those detained. Many are elderly and in poor health, and many are said to be in the U.S. legally. A recent data profile of Delaney Hall’s population showed that 70.5% of detainees had no criminal history. Another 11.7% had criminal convictions and 17.8% had pending criminal charges, mostly for low-level offenses.
The United Methodist gathering was like previous ones held there by other faith groups, usually with organizing assistance from immigration advocacy partners. Pax Christi USA’s regional coordinator Kathy O’Leary informed attendees about changing visitation policies and the steady transfer of detainees to other locations, often without advance notice to their families.
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Volunteers welcomed and shared information with visiting loved ones. Outside and inside a large, white “radical hospitality tent,” they offered food, resources and items for children. And they gave donated grocery store gift cards to families — many trying to survive without their main providers at home. They also loaned some visitors “compliance clothing” to help them meet the center’s strict dress code.
“We are here to bear witness,” Perez said. “When people have little power, the church has a responsibility to stand beside them. … When there are unanswered questions about mistreatment, we must have the courage to ask on their behalf. When people die in custody or after detention, their families deserve truth, transparency and answers. And when systems fail to protect human dignity, people of faith must have the courage to say this is not acceptable.”
Perez’s fellow superintendents — the Revs. Ronell Howard and Sang Won Doh — also delivered impassioned messages of love, mercy and justice to the attentive crowd, most of whom came from United Methodist churches in North Jersey.
Howard interpreted Jesus’ command to “Love your neighbor as yourself” to include all immigrants as neighbors, regardless of borders, laws, citizenship or immigration status.
“We want safety for ourselves and our children,” she shouted to “Amens” from listeners. “We want our families kept together. We want to go to bed at night without wondering whether someone we love will disappear before morning.
“We want meaningful work. We want food on our tables. We want roofs over our heads. We want our children to be educated. We want to live without fear. We want to be treated with dignity. We want the opportunity to build something better than what we inherited,” she said.
“Jesus said, ‘Whatever you desire for yourself, whatever dignity … (and) security you seek for yourself, whatever future you dream about for your children, love your neighbor enough to want it for them, too.’”
The Rev. Dianne McGraff is the pastor of Community United Methodist Church of Hoboken, one of many international, interethnic congregations in New Jersey. She responded to Church and Society’s publicized invitation to attend the rally and to bring greeting cards with messages of support and hope, along with donated store gift cards.
Paula Michelson, from Morristown United Methodist Church, has come each month since September 2025, with a dedicated team of church members to serve grilled hot dogs, doughnuts and coffee to visitors outside the hospitality tent.
“We’re just really committed to being here to make a difference in people’s lives in any way we can,” she said.
Her pastor, the Rev. Luana Cook Scott, echoed those sentiments to the crowd with familiar words from both Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, and Jesus Christ.
“What does it mean for us to do no harm … (and) to do good when families are separated and suffering?” she asked. “What does it mean to stay in love with God when loving God requires us to stand beside someone in need? Our faith requires something of us.
“Jesus said, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me,’” she recalled. “‘I was in prison and you visited me. Whatever you did for the least of these, you also did for me.’ So now, here we are.”
Investigations continue
The small, peaceful gathering was in contrast to larger, more agitated protests that have occurred since Delaney Hall reopened last year. Some led to violence between protesters and enforcement officers that involved verbal and physical attacks, use of pepper spray and arrests.
A National Day of Action drew about 40 activists there July 25 to protest against ICE and current immigration policies, among other concerns.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers held hearings in July to investigate the conditions at Delaney Hall, along with recent protests and enforcement efforts.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark and other Democratic state officials have renewed calls for Delaney Hall to be closed and demanded transparency about the recent deaths there. And in August, the state Attorney General’s Office launched a civil rights investigation into the facility.
Amid the uncertainty, Perez urged attendees at the gathering to take a stand for human dignity.
“We are here to say that human dignity does not depend on immigration status, citizenship, power or whether someone has a voice. Human dignity comes from God.”
Coleman is a longtime United Methodist communicator.
News media contact: Julie Dwyer, news editor, newdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
